Hi Everyone,
For those of you that have been following the messages that I have
received from Paul Smith, the doctoral physics student that was
recently stationed at Casey Research Station in Antarctica, please
find attached the latest message I have received from him on his
safe arrival back in Melbourne, Australia.

This message, as well as the others I have received from Paul, are
available via anonymous ftp from ftp.nevada.edu in the
/pub/ccsd/ANTARCTICA directory.
Thanks!
Bruce Daley
chipper@redrock.nevada.edu


Date: 16 Mar 1993 14:02:14 +1000
From: Paul R Smith - La Trobe Uni 
Subject: a small epilogue
To:  chipper
        
Hello again, just a last message to my captive audience to let
those that don't know that I'm now back in the sweltering climes of
Melbourne.  To go back to where I left off, we left Casey on the
9th of March and jumped on the big red taxi Aurora Australis.  We
had the pleasure of saying goodbye to the people leaving on Icebird
two days earlier and it was with a tear in our eye that we hurled
water and flour bombs from the roof of a building as they LARCed
their way to the waters edge.  And LARCs move so slowly that they
would really be best described as sitting ducks.  We even had a
fire pump and water supply but alas they had outwitted us there by
sabotaging the spark plug.
The winterers were only too happy to do the same for us when we
left but at least we had a counter attack ready.

Aurora was a great ship to travel on, I took the big P&O written on
the side to be a good sign although it wasn't quite like being on
The Love Boat...thank god!  Casey was it's last stop so there
wasn't a bed left after we had boarded but there was still far more
room than Icebird.  There was a lot of interesting stuff on board
too since it had just completed a marine science cruise.  Equipment
to measure the seabed profile and salinity, temeperature and depth
and catch all sort of weird fish abounded.  One of the favourite 
catches was krill which was there by the drumfull.  For
entertainment there was a video room (which seemed to run 24 hours
a day), gym, sauna, and visiting the bridge.   As usual the food
was pretty good, in spite of their being over 2 months at sea.  
Anything that was going off (eg Kiwi fruit) got thrown at some poor
guy who was getting married when he got back to Hobart.

We passed through ice floes for the first couple of days but it
wasn't long before we left the bergs behind and were just left with
the open sea and a few sea birds to look at.  For the most part the
seas were quite smooth although one night I woke up in what I
thought was a near vertical position.  Didn't get seasick anyway. 
On the 9th everyone was up to meet customs who came on board at 6am
to make sure we weren't smuggling pet penguins or rocks or
something back to Oz and we tied up at the wharf at 7am, still
rubbing sleep out of our eyes.  As well as family and friends
waiting on the dock, a bagpipe band came marching around the corner
and stayed for the duration of the unloading blasting out some good
old Scottish music.

The next couple of days I was at AntDiv helping out with moving
some stuff around and down at Port Huon we moved the ice cores from
the drilling programs into a warehouse freezer.  They had brought
back the very last ice core that had been drilled before reaching
bedrock so I got to see ice from 1200m deep, which looks much like
ice from any other depth except it was a bit dirty.  
Most of this years cores are still at the drill site and will be
brought back next year when they've had a chance to relax a bit and
get less stressful. Good idea since the container with last years
cores coming back this year got bashed against the side of the ship
on loading.
After that I went camping for a couple of days with one of the guys
I'd worked with down south and got to see some of Tassy's beautiful
east coast, then on the 13th it was home to Melbourne.  And that's
it, now you don't have to listen to me ramble on anymore and I will
spend the next year trying to reintegrate into society.  Or at
least the engineering department. 
Thanks to everyone who sent mail and to those who reckoned I did an
ok job at describing life at the bottom end of the world.
Cheers,

Paul